Museum–aquarium of Nancy, Natural history museum and aquarium in Nancy, France
The Museum-Aquarium of Nancy combines displays of preserved animals with living aquatic species housed within a 1933 building. The collection features hundreds of mounted specimens and numerous aquariums representing different water environments.
The collections trace back to 1752, when Duke Stanislas Leszczynski founded a Royal College of Medicine by merging seventeen regional cabinets of curiosities. After the natural history cabinet was revived with the Nancy Faculty of Sciences in 1854, Lucien Cuénot pushed for a dedicated building, and in 1933 the zoology collections moved into the new Institut de Zoologie. The museum received the Musée de France designation in 2004.
The name recalls the former Institut de Zoologie: "FACULTÉ DES SCIENCES" is carved above the entrance, with "INSTITUT DE ZOOLOGIE" and "MUSÉE DE ZOOLOGIE" on the piers. The zoology gallery occupies the first floor, while the ground floor holds the Nautilus and Calypso aquarium galleries and the salle bateau. At the end of the Nautilus gallery, the Astrolabe gallery hosts temporary exhibitions of contemporary artists.
The museum stands at 34 rue Sainte-Catherine, on the axis between place Stanislas and porte Sainte-Catherine, with the former botanical garden, jardin Dominique Alexandre Godron, behind it. The Division de fer tram stop on line 1 is about 300 metres away, and free parking is available along the canal de l'Est and the marina near porte Sainte-Catherine. Inside, aquariums and the Nautilus, Calypso and Astrolabe galleries occupy the ground floor, while the zoology gallery and temporary exhibition spaces are upstairs.
The 1933 building was designed without windows to protect the collections from light damage. This unusual design choice shows how seriously the care of the objects was taken from the start.
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